NIMROD

Stedman (1978) states that:

"The four sons of Ham are relatively easy to trace in history. Cush is
associated with the peoples of Southern Arabia and Ethiopia. Ethiopians
still trace their ancestry back to Cush. Egypt (or Mizraim, in Hebrew-an
ancient name for Egypt) became the father of the Egyptian Empire, settling
in the Nile Valley. Put is associated with Lydia, on the west of Egypt
in North Africa. Canaan centered largely in and around Palestine, though
the Canaanites later became much more widespread.

The account zooms in on an individual named Nimrod, who is called
a great hunter. He is a rather mysterious figure of great importance in
ancient history. He is the founder of both Babylon and Nineveh, the two
great cities of antiquity which became, ultimately, enemies of Israel.
The prominent thing that is said about him here is that he was a mighty
man, a mighty hunter before the Lord. Now, it was the work of kings in
those ancient days to be hunters. This was a time when civilization was
sparse and wild animals were a constant threat to the people. Kings, having
nothing much else to do, organized hunting parties and acted as the protectors
of their people by killing wild animals. Nimrod evidently gained a great
reputation as such a hunter, but he was more than a hunter of wild animals.
The Jewish Talmud helps us here, for it says that he was "a hunter of the
souls of men." By the founding of Babylon and Nineveh we have a hint given
of the nature of this man. We are told here that he was "the first mighty
man on earth," i.e., after the flood. That phrase, "mighty man," takes
us back to Genesis 6 where, in that strange story of the invasion of the
"sons of God" into the human race, there resulted a race called the Nephilim.

We are told that "these were the mighty men that were of old, the men
of renown." This demonic invasion of the race, with sexual overtones, brought
into being a race of giants that were morally degraded. These also appear
later on in the Canaanite tribes. We have found this suggestive line of
thought running through the Scriptural account up to this point. Nimrod
apparently was one of these "mighty men," and therefore introduced a perverted,
degraded form of religion into the world. It began at Babylon, spread to
Nineveh, and can be traced in history as it subsequently spread throughout
the whole of the earth. Thus, in this man Nimrod, we have the seed of idolatry
and false religion coming in again after the flood.

If you drop the first consonant of Nimrod's name and take the
others M, R, D you will have the basic root of the god of Babylon, whose
name was Marduk, and whom most scholars identify with Nimrod. In the Babylonian
religion, Nimrod (or Marduk) held a unique place. His wife was Semiramis.
(In Cairo, Egypt, the Semiramis Hotel is named after this woman.) Marduk
and Semiramis were the ancient god and goddess of Babylon. They had a son
whom Semiramis claimed was virgin-born, and they founded the mother and
child cult. This was the central character of the religion of ancient Babylon,
the worship of a mother and child, supposedly virgin-born. You can see
in this a clever attempt on the part of Satan to anticipate the genuine
virgin birth and thus to cast disrepute upon the story when the Lord Jesus
would later be born into history.

This ancient Babylonian cult of the mother and child spread to other
parts of the earth. You will find it in the Egyptian religion as Isis and
Osiris. In Greece it is Venus and Adonis, and in the Hindu religion it
is Ushas and Vishnu. The same cult prevails in various other localities.
It appears in the Old Testament in Jeremiah where the Israelites are warned
against offering sacrifices to "the Queen of Heaven." This Queen of Heaven
is Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod, the original mother of the Mother and
Child cult. The cult has also crept into Christianity and forms the basis
for the Mariolatry that has prevailed in the Roman Catholic Church, where
the Mother and Child are worshiped as joint redeemers.

Alexander Hislop,
an authoritative writer in this field, has written a book called "The Two
Babylons," which should be of great interest if you desire to pursue this
further. This idolatrous religion culminates at last in the Bible in the
book of Revelation. There, a "great harlot" appears, whose name is "Mystery
Babylon the Great," the originator of all the harlotries and false religions
of earth. The essence of Babylonianism, as we understand from Scripture,
is the attempt to gain earthly honor by means of religious authority. That
is Babylonianism, and it has pervaded Christian churches, Hindu temples,
Buddhist shrines, and Mohammedan mosques. Everywhere it is the element
that marks falseness in religion-the attempt to gain earthly power and
prestige by means of religious authority. That is what Nimrod began and
what God will ultimately destroy, as we read in the book of Revelation."